Gunpowder Empire

“All right. I still want to see Kuzmickas leave, so I'm going up on the wall,” Jeremy said. “Are you coming?”

“Oh, I'll come,” Fabio Lentulo said. “You're not going to be able to go around town telling people I'm yellow.” Jeremy's challenge would have got a lot of young men in Los Angeles to go with him. Here in Polisso, any of them would have risen to it as automatically as a trout rising to strike at a fly. People here did behave in a more macho way than they did in the home timeline. They thought that was what they were supposed to do, and they did it.

In school, Jeremy had learned nothing could travel faster than light. He didn't think his teachers had heard about the speed with which rumor could spread. He and Fabio Lentulo were part of a line going up the stone stairs to the top of the wall. Grumbling soldiers herded the civilian gawkers along like so many sheep. “Yes, the barbarians are pulling out,” they said. “You can take your gander, if it makes you happy. Mind you don't get your stupid heads shot off. The Lietuvans haven't quit fighting, and they aren't gone yet.”

Jeremy discovered how true that was a moment later. A Lietuvan soldier popped up out of a trench, aimed a matchlock in his general direction, and pulled the trigger to bring the burning match down on the priming powder. The priming powder caught and set off the main charge. The musket went off. A great cloud of gray smoke made the musketeer vanish. The bang of the gun reached Jeremy half a second later- about the same time as the bullet whined past his head. He ducked. He couldn't help it.

When he looked behind him, he saw that Fabio Lentulo had ducked, too. That made him feel better. Now his friend couldn't tease him for being a coward, either. And why did such teasing matter to him? Maybe he had more macho in himself than he wanted to admit.

But even though some of the Lietuvans were still shooting at Polisso, the rest did seem to be leaving. Tents around the city were coming down. Wagons drawn by horses or mules or oxen were rolling away. Companies of musketeers like the man who'd shot at Jeremy were marching off to the south. Distantly, the breeze brought commands in musical Lietuvan to Jeremy's ears.

“They are going,“ he said.

“Looks that way,” Fabio Lentulo agreed. Then he yelled something truly vile at King Kuzmickas. He followed it with a gesture much nastier than the one he and Jeremy had aimed at each other.

He wasn't the only one doing such things, either. Half the men seemed to be swearing at the Lietuvans or sending them obscene gestures or doing both at once. The big blond soldiers shouted back in their language. They sent the Romans gestures different but no less foul.

And some of them kept on shooting at Polisso. The legionaries on the wall shot back at them. About ten meters in front of Jeremy, a civilian fell down, clutching at his leg. His howl of pain pierced the jeers like a sword piercing flesh.

When Jeremy and Fabio Lentulo walked by where he'd been wounded, the crosstime trader didn't look at the scarlet puddle of blood on the stone. He didn't need to look to know it was there. He could smell the hot-metal scent, as he had when he stabbed the Lietuvan soldier.

By contrast, the apprentice stared and stared at the gore.

“Got him good,” he remarked. “Did you hear him yell?”

“A deaf man would have heard him yell,” Jeremy answered.

Fabio Lentulo thought that was fu

Joys, on the other hand… The Lietuvan soldiers were going away. With luck, they wouldn't be able to come back. That would do for joy till something better came along. Jeremy shook his fist at the withdrawing soldiers. He never wanted to see them again, or King Kuzmickas, either.

As soon as the Lietuvans were gone, the defenders of Polisso opened the gates. People poured out of the city. Some-the scavengers-made for the Lietuvan camp, to bring back and sell whatever the enemy had left behind. Others just wanted to get away from their houses, to get away from their neighbors, for a little while. Amanda was one of those.

She couldn't go by herself. That wasn't done. It wasn't safe, either. But she and Jeremy went out together. He didn't feel the need to get away as much as she did. But he did see- she made him see-she would be impossible unless she got out for a little while. Out they went.

As far as guns would reach from the wall, the ground was cratered, the grass torn to shreds. She'd seen that when she and her brother went to call on King Kuzmickas. When the wind swung, it brought the stink of the Lietuvan encampment to her nose. The Lietuvans had been even more careless of filth and dirt and sewage than the Romans were. That they could have still surprised her.

“They probably would have had to leave pretty soon even if there weren't a Roman army coming up from the south,” Jeremy said. “In an alternate like this, sickness kills more soldiers than bullets ever do.”

Amanda knew he was right. That didn't mean she felt like listening. She didn't answer. She just kept walking till the wind swung again and the stench went away. Then she stepped off the road. She lay down on her back in the grass. It tickled her ankles and her arms and her cheeks. She looked up and saw nothing but blue sky.

“Ahhh!” she said.

For a wonder, Jeremy didn't spoil the moment. He stayed out of her way and let her do what she wanted-what she needed-to do. When she sat up again, she brushed grass out of her hair with both hands. She looked forward to using real shampoo once more, too. Her brother stood by the side of the road, sword on his hip, watching for Lietuvan stragglers and any other strangers who might be dangerous. He'd plucked a long grass stem and put it between his teeth.

“Except for the sword, you look like a hick farmer on an ancient sitcom,” Amanda told him.

“Is that a fact?” he said, doing a bad half-Southern, half-Midwestern accent. Then he went back to neoLatin: “All the backwoods farmers on all those stupid programs were as modern as next week next to the peasants in this alternate.”

“Well, sure,” Amanda said. Peasants here were cut off from the wider world around them in a way nobody in America had been since the invention of the telegraph. They might have been more cut off from the wider world than peasants in

Europe since the invention of the printing press. That went back a long way, but only a third of the distance to the breakpoint between the home timeline and Agrippan Rome.

A cool breeze blew down from the mountains to the north. It didn't say winter was coming, not yet, but it did say summer wouldn't last forever. The harvest was on the way-and it would come even sooner in chilly Lietuva than here. There was another reason King Kuzmickas' army would have had trouble besieging Polisso much longer.

Jeremy spread his arms. The breeze made the wide sleeves of his tunic flap. He said, “Everything's so peaceful, so quiet. I'd almost forgotten what quiet is all about.”

“Ca

“Heh,” Jeremy said, and then, “It all seems so stupid. Is owning Polisso worth killing so many people? I can't see it.”

“Neither can I,” Amanda said. “But could you explain the Software War so it made sense to the city prefect here?”

“You can't explain anything so it makes sense to Sesto Capurnio. I ought to know,” Jeremy said. Amanda made a face at him. He made one right back at her. Then he went on, “All right. I know what you mean. But copy protection is something worth fighting over.“